#its like the “hello world” or MNIST handwritten digits classification program for IRL languages | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

imagine-sisyphus-trigger-happy · 7 months ago

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Ohh look, it's Kiki-Bouba again! As indeed all things are.

For those who don't know, the "real" reason most people choose x for kisses (despite whatever rationale they think of ex post facto) is this: "kiss" has a voiceless consonant and a front vowel, whereas "hug" has a voiced consonant and a back vowel; and "x" looks "spiky" while "o" looks round.

It has been extensively documented in numerous papers that people, across all language families and societal structures, when asked to choose between the names "Kiki" and "Bouba" for a spiky and a round "character", will choose the first for the former and the second for the latter.

i want reasoning in the tags or replies!!

#Like there are way way more papers discussing this than you would think. The first thing linguists do when a new language (of say #The first thing linguists rush to do when a new language is discovered #say of a hitherto uncontacted tribe in a jungle #or perhaps a single guy who lives in a cottage in the mountains and speaks a technically distinct version of german #is to see if they follow the Kiki-Bouba rule #and they always do!#well “always” as in accounting for statistical deviation sampling errors response biases etc of course #its like the ��hello world” or MNIST handwritten digits classification program for IRL languages

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